Every Monday, this column will break down the most popular waiver wire and free agent acquisitions of the weekend.

Fantasy baseball managers know that our game is the ultimate test of grit, grind, tenacity, and patience. Unlike fantasy football, where league titles can be won with minimal in-season activity, fantasy baseball leagues require incessant attention and activity. Particularly when it comes to free agent adds and drops. Real-life baseball managers are constantly adjusting batting orders, players are frequently optioned to and promoted from the Minor Leagues, and injuries occur almost daily. There’s no resting on our laurels. We must always stay vigilant with league news and notes and remain active on the waiver wire if we want to win our leagues.

Every week, I’ll dig into the top adds on the ever-popular Fantrax and in the NFBC Online Championship (OC), a national mid-stakes contest with 240 total leagues of 12 and a six-figure grand prize. Reviewing player adds between the two should provide us with a well-rounded perspective and barometer of the fantasy baseball marketplace.

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I fought the law and the law won. And that law is the law of starting pitcher attrition. To make up for losing starters to season-ending injuries and the regression monster, turn to IL stashes.

This article won’t be for all of you, or at least the advice won’t be universally applicable. For those of you with limited IL room, or limited IL slots, this may not be as actionable today. But for most of these pitchers, you can likely hold off a few weeks before others in your league are ready to pull the trigger. 

But if you do have room to hold onto a player with a little upside, you are unlikely to be outbid in FAAB at this point. That would be the biggest value add of bringing on these pitchers now — not having to outbid opposing managers once more news is out. 

I will run through a handful of pitchers worth considering, sticking to blurbs unless a pitcher excites me to the point of digging in a bit deeper. I will focus on players who are rostered in less than half of CBS and Yahoo leagues (sorry Kris Bubic and Logan Henderson). 

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Tim Vizer-Imagn Images

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even larger entry fees ($2.5K to $15K). They are named Elite leagues (previously called High Stakes Leagues), and there are nine of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain every advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

7:32	Jeff Zimmerman:

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Jordan Johnson-Imagn Images

In this article, I cover the players using CBS’s and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now, while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. I start players being added at CBS who started the week on less than 40% of rosters.

The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference, grouped by hitters, starters, and relievers. Read the rest of this entry »

Dodgers star catcher Will Smith hit the IL this week with neck inflammation that could keep him out past the minimum 10 days as Dave Roberts also suggested he’d need a ramp up period upon returning, though it wasn’t clear if that meant a full-on rehab stint. The 31-year-old backstop has disappointed this year, sitting 16th among catchers on the Player Rater. He’s hitting .249/.338/.382 with 6 HR, 23 RBI, and 23 R in 201 PA.

I was really excited about him this year, seeing him as an undervalued C1 in 2-catcher setups and a cheaper way to get a good piece of the coveted Dodgers lineup. While I never thought his .296 AVG was coming again this year, I didn’t expect a fallback all the way to 2024’s level (.248), either, but maybe I should have upon further investigation. Obviously the .345 BABIP that drove his AVG last year wasn’t going to sustain but he was a firm .270s BABIP guy for four years before that, posting a .257 AVG in the process. He’s at a .272 BABIP and .249 AVG this year so that likely should’ve been my expectation.

At C16 on the Player Rater, he was underwhelming-but-fine in 2-catcher leagues and certainly not killing anyone in 1-catcher setups. Let’s take a look at a few guys who could be worth picking up to replace him and possibly even keeping around when he returns.

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In mid-April, I introduced my process of reviewing matchups and schedules in two- to three-week windows to identify outliers and potential short-term gains. The basic premise is that rest-of-season (ROS) analysis has high margins of error and that it is better to compartmentalize fantasy decision-making into short-term timeframes. We do not know who will get hurt and whether a specific team would be a good or bad matchup one month or two months from now. In that April article, the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets stood out as positive outliers. The White Sox crushed over the 3.5-week window, ranking fourth in runs and top three in isolated power and wRC+. The Mets were a huge letdown, though they were without offensive leader Juan Soto and other key hitters for parts of that stretch. Soon thereafter, Francisco Lindor joined the injury party.

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Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less.

The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.

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Every Monday, this column will break down the most popular waiver wire and free agent acquisitions of the weekend.

Fantasy baseball managers know that our game is the ultimate test of grit, grind, tenacity, and patience. Unlike fantasy football, where league titles can be won with minimal in-season activity, fantasy baseball leagues require incessant attention and activity. Particularly when it comes to free agent adds and drops. Real-life baseball managers are constantly adjusting batting orders, players are frequently optioned to and promoted from the Minor Leagues, and injuries occur almost daily. There’s no resting on our laurels. We must always stay vigilant with league news and notes and remain active on the waiver wire if we want to win our leagues.

Every week, I’ll dig into the top adds on the ever-popular Fantrax and in the NFBC Online Championship (OC), a national mid-stakes contest with 240 total leagues of 12 and a six-figure grand prize. Reviewing player adds between the two should provide us with a well-rounded perspective and barometer of the fantasy baseball marketplace.

Read the rest of this entry »

7:33	Jeff Zimmerman:

Read the rest of this entry »